As a music platform Bandcamp is something of a home for independent artists and labels, where revenue goes goes mainly to creators with the added bonus of offering up listeners full access to lossless formats, streaming, downloading, and other tools. Which makes today's acquisition by Epic Games an interesting move for the maker of Fortnite and Unreal Engine.

Due to Bandcamp's popularity and position as an artist-friendly haven (it's worth remembering that it's also a massive company and big player in the online music space) the news broke there overnight. Which immediately goes into damage control on the account of the fairly expected backlash an acquisition of any kind would receive.

"Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community, and I will continue to lead our team," writes Ethan Diamond, Bandcamp co-founder and CEO. "The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model (where artists net an average of 82% of every sale), you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site."

The hope is that Epic will allow Bandcamp to expand internationally and push its development and systems into areas like streaming and even vinyl pressing. As for Epic it's unclear what crossover there might be, no doubt Fortnite is becoming a platform for music and live shows so perhaps there's some avenue there.

Ethan notes that being acquired is something that has been on the table for sometime but not pursued on the account of what Bandcamp represents. "We’ve always felt that doing so would only be exciting if they strongly believed in our mission, were aligned with our values, and not only wanted to see Bandcamp continue, but also wanted to provide the resources to bring a lot more benefit to the artists, labels, and fans who use the site," he states. "Epic ticks all those boxes. We share a vision of building the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world, and together we’ll be able to create even more opportunities for artists to be compensated fairly for their work."

Speaking of artists, be sure to check out Kbit's latest release on Bandcamp -- The Beat Tapes.